Irritatingly, the article doesn’t present the full text of Cook’s contribution, just a series of quotes. And, like Kirk, I was a bit let down by this one in particular:

I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.

It’s easy to forget that most programming languages — and certainly all of the major ones — are written in entirely English words: if, then, while, and even shortened versions of English words like var for a variable. It’s not enough to know what words to put where; good programmers understand the specific use of these words, and that requires an understanding of the grammatical syntax of English.

What would it take for a programming language — like, say, Swift — to be translated into multiple human languages? That would be a remarkable feat, and if it truly is more important to be able to write software than to learn a second language — and I’m not convinced it is — it would open doors to lots of non-English speakers who are aching to code.